I haven’t done a meme for ages – they don’t seem to going around much anymore, at least not like they used to. But when I saw this one over at Adventures in Babywearing recently, I thought it looked like fun. 

It’s about our children’s names.

1. Do you have any cultural or religious naming traditions?

Yes, we actually do. I decided that I wanted to honor my Jewish heritage (my dad’s family) by using Hebrew names for our kids. It really didn’t make things too much more difficult when it came to choosing names because we both really like so many of the names to begin with.

When it came to middle names, we decided to use family names. Somehow they’ve all been from my family so far – not exactly on purpose, that’s just how it’s worked out. Abby’s middle name is my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, “Kelly”. Hannah has my middle name, “Lynne”. And Becca has my mom’s middle name, “Eleanor”. If we ever have a boy though, we’ll use a family name from Ron’s side as the middle name.

2. Did you or your partner come to the marriage with pre-selected names?

Yes, but we didn’t actually use any of them! We talked about baby names a lot even before we got married but then we changed our minds (ok – I changed my mind) when it actually came down to it. Somewhere around here we have the old notebook where we’d written down our initial ideas.

3. Did you consider the sound of the first and middle and last names together? Did this make any sad eliminations?

Yes! I really wanted to use my mom’s first name (Sara) as Abby’s middle name. But given what her initials would’ve been, it was very sadly eliminated as a possibility – just remember our last name also starts with ‘S’… LOL Having a long and not exactly common last name made for some interesting combinations – we definitely looked at how everything sounded all together. Although by the time we got to Becca it was less important – neither of us thought that ‘Rebecca Eleanor’ was the best combination – it’s definitely long. But I wanted to use one of my mom’s names, and neither ‘Hannah Sara’ or ‘Rebecca Sara’ had sounded right. Although I think now we probably should’ve done ‘Hannah Eleanor’ instead – I don’t remember why we didn’t like it at the time.

4. Did you have veto powers?

Yes. So did he – we both had to agree on the names.

5. Did the baby naming cause arguments?

Not really – although Ron thinks I’m way too picky when it comes to baby names. The hardest one was Hannah – we literally had no options that we both really liked until right before she was born.

6. Do you think it is easier to name boys or girls?

In our case, I definitely think boys would be easier – we’ve pretty much run through every girl name we can both agree on! We did have boys names picked each time too, but a different boy name for each of them. Abby would’ve been ‘Noah Ronald’ if she’d been a boy. Then my friend Kristi used ‘Noah’, so we chose ‘Jonah’ if Hannah had been a boy (yes, still Hebrew names). I don’t know what middle name we would’ve used though – we never got that far because it became moot when we found out she was another girl. By the time I was pregnant with Becca, I wasn’t as fond of ‘Jonah’ anymore – if she’d been a boy, she likely would’ve been ‘Eli’ or ‘Elijah’. I think.

7. Did you eliminate names because of people from your past or present who you don’t like or because a certain image comes to mind.

Yes – I totally associate names with people, either in good ways or bad. I have a very hard time using a name that I already associate with a person.

8. Did you / would you survey your children to get their thoughts on the name?

I don’t remember exactly. Abby was so little when I was pregnant with Hannah that she really didn’t even understand what was going on. I think she and Hannah had name ideas when I was pregnant with Becca, but I don’t remember what they were. I don’t think we told them what our name ideas were though.

9. Did you tell people the name or possible names before the baby was born or were they “in the vault”?

With Abby, we decided to tell everyone the gender but keep the name ideas a secret (except in a couple of cases). We did tell our ideas for Hannah and Becca, but since we don’t ever decide on a name absolutely for sure until the baby’s actually born, it’s always just a list of possibilities.

10. Did you use baby name books?

Yes – we found Abby’s name in a book originally, I think. Otherwise we just looked through them to get ideas. I have a book I really like that goes through all of the naming trends and such – it’s really interesting to read.

Drumroll Please…What did you name your kids?

Abigail Kelly
Hannah Lynne
Rebecca Eleanor

I tag – you! If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. I really want to know how you came up with your kids’ names!